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Saturday, 7 January 2017

Nuremberg

The sky is low and
grey and wet today. I walk as fast as my middle aged legs will take
me towards the warmth of the overcrowded train, meeting no-one’s
eye from the moment I leave my warm, tidy flat.

Last night I watched
TV as I do every night. It doesn't entertain me. I don't seek
entertainment. I don't seek peace. I seek enough distraction there
in that quiet, musical-less space, until that feeling I will shut
down for the night, and begin the day again as soon as my body has
had enough of Morpheus’ gift.

Sleep is a gift,
something to take me away from the gift I share with the Nazi’s
children on the documentary I watched. One accepted his father
crimes – his father and mother both being cruel to him; distant;
afraid of love. And both stealing and killing from the interned;
those they had marked with a star and damned. The other, brought up
in a loving Nazi’s home, unable to square the kind father with the
man who had commanded executions and torture.

My own guilt is not
so easy to either stand firm and say, “I did that. I am a horrible
mass murderer;” nor is it easy to say, “I am generally a nice
person – I fight the system I’m caught in...”

Because here I go
again, pushing against the wind and rain, avoiding the rush hour
tyres throwing puddles towards me; trying to focus only on the next
part of my distracting routine; buy a newspaper and a black, ultra
strong coffee from the vendor on the platform. The same smiling
face, surprising me every day by asking me asking me if its my usual
I'll be having – someone so young, hopeful and stuck in a routine
and I know, satisfyingly, she won’t think of me until my soulless
eyes gaze upwards towards her again tomorrow.

I’m earlier than
usual. This is not good. This means a wait for the train that can
only be filled by reading something from the paper at the side of the
track, opening a newspaper and holding my coffee.

I slow my pace.
Maybe if I walk slower and concentrate on surroundings; watch other
wet drones head towards their places of work to earn their heat and
distracting TV and packaged, microwaved, reconstituted food; perhaps
that will distract me.

My glasses are
covered in droplets, my peaked cap losing the battle with Scottish
rain that defies gravity and falls in impossible angles. I want to be
under the cover of the shelter at the train; I want the brief human
contact to be over. I want my coffee and a paper to distract.

And the guilt washes
over me. The deaths I have caused, the suffering, the total breakdown
of humanity I have created and continue to create for my heat and
soup.

I think of the
children battling for their lives, the mothers who will cry blood
over the bodies of their sons because of me. Because of what I do,
every day, to buy stuff some other poor person has been forced to
create in order to afford heat and cheap food.

Nuremberg was the
height of humanity and logic after a war and after the liberation of
the death camps – fair trials of those who were responsible for
decisions that meant the extermination of millions of people. The
world was able to work towards a cleansing because the Nazi’s -
the murderers – were carefully tried; given time to realis their
part in the machine of death they had created, alone in their cells
or in the dock; and the guilty were sentenced - their sins purged,
leaving only time to heal what they’d done.

Every day I make
this journey, knowing that somewhere in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and other
theatres of war, death, annihilation people will die because of my
alarm wakening me this morning. Because I have this routine, because
I fill the silences with distraction and wont forgo my heat, food and
peaked cap.

I arrive at the
station, and cross the bridge to the centre platform. And I look up
at the girl, and she says, “same as usual?” And I nod. She fills
the coffee filter, twists it around, pulls the lever and sets the
paper cup underneath the trickling brown liquid and turns and lifts
The Guardian from her rack and hands it over to me. The same
distracting, satisfying routine as I stand here, water dripping from
my cap. I take off my glasses and wipe them with a serviette and she
smiles.

She smiles at the
mass murderer, the man who today will take the decision to carry on
in the system and create death; blast communities into the stone age;
tear children apart; vaporise mothers, brothers, sisters, old and
young.

Her face changes and
I realise I am crying. The routine has been broken and the wall has
been breached, for a small time. My regret spills out for a moment,
acknowledged by this girl.

“Are you OK?”

I look at her, and I
go cold. I’ve slipped. She does know me. She looks at me as if
her world has crumbled, embarrassed. This exchange has gone beyond
the usual mumbled “Good morning,” and “Thanks.”

I stare, horrified,
but out of control and I sob.

She looks from right
to left. There is no queue. And everyone is facing the direction of
the approaching train.

And I think, “What
will I do?”

And I say, “What
will I do?”

And she says, “What
has happened?” Her action of capping the coffee cup with its lid,
wrapping it in a serviette and moving it through the space between us
is retarded, she is moving through a starch thickened atmosphere,
created by my spasmodic sobs.

The train pulls in
and eventually I reach for the coffee, delve into my pocket and
thrust the fiver at her. I usually wait for change but I turn and
make for the train.

The day goes as it
usually does; I read the paper on the train - death, destruction,
bad decisions of political people, singers screwing and footballers
failing or not. I kill thousands through my work. I go home, picking
up pizza on the walk to my house, and live the brightness of the One
Show, find a documentary about Stone Henge, watch a chewing gum
Netflix series I never remember the name of, get sleepy and barely
make it to bed before I fall asleep.

My uniform is dry,
and the morning outside is cold, icy, misty. My glasses steam up and
I wipe them on my cuff.

The acrid taste of
the exhaust of the rush hour traffic fills my asthmatic lungs. But I
think, “at least it isn't phosphorous or the sharp metal rain of
fragmentation or shrapnel. I know the difference between these words,
as I should in the killing business.

I made sure this
morning that I filled my cereal bowl a little more and had two
glasses of orange juice – just to ensure my timings are right. I
wont have to slow my usual pace.

How will she react?
I need the coffee and I need the paper, otherwise, my head will be
filled even further with the screaming, dying children than it
usually is.

I can’t avoid her,
I cant avoid the routine. But I’ll just keep it to my usual
interaction; walk towards the kiosk, smile a “Good morning,” and
she’ll give me my usual and I’ll board the train, keep my head
down, buried in distraction and the day will eventually pass.

As I walk, I try to
think about the man explaining the acoustics of Stone Henge, the
ancient sounds that those people once must have thought were the
amplified voices of the sky Gods. But my mind quickly flicks to the
dirty faces of the refugees walking through the muddy fields,
unwanted after the ordeal I have put them through. Hated by people
across Europe for daring to leave the burning metal and forces that
rip them apart.

And here I am
walking to the place I make the decision every day to go to. A place
where decisions are made to help create the perfect white hot metal
storm to rip through their houses, churches, mosques, shops, schools,
weddings…

I arrive at the
station. I feel relief as it distracts; this problem I created
yesterday, and my solution of ensuring there is less time to think at
the kiosk. Less time to dwell.

I approach the
kiosk. She looks down at me, I smile and say, “Good morning.”

And she doesn’t
say the usual, automatic words. The meaningless exchange, the
exchange we have every day that can be forgotten as soon as it has
played out has been broken, as if someone has drawn a chisel across a
record.

“How are you
today?” She says, looking concerned.

I don't now what to
say. I open my mouth, and I want to say, “A large black Americano
with an extra shot and a Guardian, please,” but I cant.

Yesterday comes
flooding back. My grief at that moment. The slip. The chink
between the veil of pretence that all is normal opens. And I freeze.
With my mouth open.

“Is everything
OK?” She says.

I look from right to
left. No one is looking. Everyone is ignoring the world around
them; engaging in important distracting trolling on their phones;
reading papers; watching the tracks; watching the time table.

She is looking at me
kindly.

I
think, “What’s wrong is I kill thousands of people every day;
men, women and children...”

I
say, “What’s wrong is I kill thousands of people every day; men,
women and children...”

Her
brow furrows. “Are you OK?” She says again.

I
say, “No. Im not. I take part in the butchering of families and
communities. I buy my coffee and my Guardian from you and heat my
house and buy
my crap food with the proceeds of my murders.”

And
I sob and walk away.

And
the train arrives and I get on the train, crying. I have no
distracting Guardian; no coffee to give me a distracting focus. I
think of the lives I will end or destroy today.

I
get off at my station and walk the short journey to my work and I
clock in, and go to my machine and load it with wire, start it up and
press the button that makes the ball bearings fall
into the tray I inspect and pass on to the next guy…